(Photo credit: Anna LaRue)
During the holidays, I spent a couple weeks traveling in Cameroon. It is dry season there, and it is especially dry in the northern part of the country. The riverbeds are bone-dry sand.
Water is so precious that every single leaking water meter I saw had a bucket under it to catch the extra drops. The photo above was taken near a main road in the city of Ngaoundéré. While someone else is paying for the water, none of it is wasted.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
The Pacific Institute has released a report on how to find the next million acre feet of water in California. As with energy in California, which now has the “loading order”, the conclusion is that conservation and efficiency efforts can achieve water savings for less cost than building new or expanding existing supplies.
An overview of some of the water-efficient practices discussed in the report:
Water savings are available through a wide variety of water-efficient practices in the urban and agricultural sectors. In the urban sector this includes replacing old, inefficient devices with high-efficiency models, as well as lawn conversion, residential metering, and rate structures that better communicate the value of water. In the agricultural sector, best water management practices include weather-based irrigation scheduling, regulated deficit irrigation, and switching from gravity or flood irrigation to sprinkler or drip irrigation systems. Here, we focus on well documented, cost-effective approaches that are already being used in California. We emphasize efficiency improvements rather than behavioral changes because the latter are less easily quantified. Nonetheless, experience in Australia, Colorado, and California in recent years shows that changing water use behavior can also provide very fast and inexpensive savings in emergencies, with long-term benefits.
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A full copy of the report can be found here.
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photo credit: freefoto.com
Many residents of California don’t have water meters. According to a recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Gleick, the recent legislation mandating water meters is needed, as the many residents of California that don’t have meters are very reluctant to install them.
But everyone should have meters. According to Ellen Hanak, a water researcher with the Public Policy Institute on California, metered cities use about 15 percent less water than unmetered cities, and cities with a tiered rate system use an additional 10 percent less (via KQED).
A few statistics from Gleick’s column:
— Sacramento only has meters in 25 percent of residences, and has no plans to meter everyone else anytime soon.
— In the San Joaquin Valley, more than half of all residents don’t have water meters.
— The city of Fresno charges all single-family households a flat rate, no matter how much water is used.
Fresno’s water rates are some of the lowest in California, and it has some of the highest water use (3 times as high as Los Angeles residents, and 5 times as high as San Francisco residents, via The California Report). There is an interesting study comparing water rates – when the study was conducted (2006), the average monthly charge was $18.52 in Fresno County, $37.55 in Alameda County, and $57.25 in Santa Cruz County.
The meters are coming. There are several laws that will require the installation of meters for all Californians (via KQED).
— All homes built after 1992 must have meters.
— Cities that receive federal water have to install meters by 2013.
— All California cities have to install meters by 2025.
Seriously, though, 2025 is a long time for a state that has major water management issues.
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Last year, there was a story from The California Report that covers the struggle to meter reluctant Fresno residents (listen to the story here).
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